The Decameron
Noon with a depth of shadow beneath the treesShakes in the heat, quivers to the sound of lutes:Half shaded, half sunlit, a great bowl of fruitsGlistens purple and golden: the flasks of wineCool in their panniers of snow: silks muffle and shine:Dim velvet, where through the leaves a sunbeam shoots,Rifts in a pane of scarlet: fingers tapping the rootsKeep languid time to the music's soft slow decline.
Suddenly from the gate rises up a cry,Hideous broken laughter, scarce human in sound;Gaunt clawed hands, thrust through the bars despairingly,Clutch fast at the scented air, while on the groundLie the poor plague-stricken carrions, who have foundStrength to crawl forth and curse the sunshine and die.
Words in this poem
- sunlit a.
- Lighted by the sun.
- muffle n.
- The bare end of the nose between the nostrils; -- used esp. of ruminants.
- sunbeam n.
- A beam or ray of the sun. [AS. sunnebeam.]
- pane n.
- The narrow edge of a hammer head. See Peen. [F. panne.]
- scarce a.
- Not plentiful or abundant; in small quantity in proportion to the demand; not easily to be procured; rare; uncommon. [OE. scars, OF. escars, eschars, LL. scarpsus, for L. excerptus, p. p. of excerpere to pick out, and hence to contract, to shorten; ex (see Ex-) + carpere. See C]
- gaunt a.
- Attenuated, as with fasting or suffering; lean; meager; pinched and grim. [Cf. Norw. gand a thin pointed stick, a tall and thin man, and W. gwan weak.]
- clawed a.
- Furnished with claws. N. Grew.
- crawl v. i.
- To move slowly by drawing the body along the ground, as a worm; to move slowly on hands and kness; to creep. [Dan. kravle, or Icel. krafla, to paw, scrabble with the hands; akin to Sw. kr to crawl; cf. LG. krabbeln, D. krabbelen to scratch.]
- sunshine n.
- The light of the sun, or the place where it shines; the direct rays of the sun, the place where they fall, or the warmth and light which they give.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Decameron is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Defeat of Youth, and Other Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #24364; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Aldous Huxley, The Decameron, in The Defeat of Youth, and Other Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #24364, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/huxley-defeat-of-youth/the-decameron.html, id L22026.
Form and metre
The Decameron is 14 lines in 2 verse paragraphs. It is in rhyming couplets, 57% of the lines: heroic couplets. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter.
See other poems in heroic couplets, other poems in iambic pentameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 -AABBAAB trees · lutesA · fruitsA · wineB · shineB · shootsA · rootsA · declineB
- 2 AB-BBA cryA · soundB · despairingly · groundB · foundB · dieA
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Noon with a depth of shadow beneath the trees | 11 | ·····/····· |
| Shakes in the heat, quivers to the sound of lutes: | 11 | ····/˘····· |
| Half shaded, half sunlit, a great bowl of fruits | 11 | ·/˘·/······ |
| Glistens purple and golden: the flasks of wine | 11 | /˘/˘·/˘···· |
| Cool in their panniers of snow: silks muffle and shine: | 12 | ···/˘···/˘·· |
| Dim velvet, where through the leaves a sunbeam shoots, | 11 | ·/˘·····/·· |
| Rifts in a pane of scarlet: fingers tapping the roots | 13 | ·····/˘/˘/˘·· |
| Keep languid time to the music's soft slow decline. | 12 | ·/˘···/˘··˘/ |
| Suddenly from the gate rises up a cry, | 10 | /˘···/˘··· |
| Hideous broken laughter, scarce human in sound; | 11 | /˘/˘/˘·/˘·· |
| Gaunt clawed hands, thrust through the bars despairingly, | 11 | ··········· |
| Clutch fast at the scented air, while on the ground | 11 | ····/˘····· |
| Lie the poor plague-stricken carrions, who have found | 11 | ····/˘/˘··· |
| Strength to crawl forth and curse the sunshine and die. | 11 | ·······/··· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.